Opening bell: Ahead of Union budget, Sensex breaches 40,000-mark, Nifty up by 35 points

Ahead of Union budget 2019, the Sensex and Nifty Indexes opened in green on Friday. It is to be noted that on Thursday PM Modi-led NDA government will present the first full budget after returning to power with a landslide victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Coming back to the domestic stock market, the Sensex rose as much as 124 points to touch intraday high of 40,031.81 and the NSE Nifty 50 Index advanced 35 points to 11,982.

Top gainers in the Sensex pack in early trade included HDFC Bank, HDFC, Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever, Asian Paints and Kotak Mahindra Bank. On the other hand, Yes Bank, ONGC, Vedanta, NTPC, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, ITC, Bharti Airtel and TCS were among the losers, shedding up to 1.82 per cent.

In the meantime, the mid-cap and small-cap shares were witnessing a mild buying interest as the S&P BSE MidCap Index and S&P BSE small-cap index rose 0.14 and 0.18 per cent each respectively.

GMR Infra, Godrej Agro Products, Ramco Cements, Oberoi Realty, LIC Housing Finance, L&T Housing Finance and Central Bank of India were among the gainers from the mid-cap space.

According to NDTV, GMR Infra, Godrej Agro Products, Ramco Cements, Oberoi Realty, LIC Housing Finance, L&T Housing Finance and Central Bank of India were among the gainers from the mid-cap space.

On the currency front, the Indian rupee depreciated 16 paise to 68.66 against the US dollar. In the meantime, the global oil benchmark Brent crude futures were trading 0.05 per cent lower at 63.27 per barrel.

Elsewhere in Asia, Shanghai Composite Index, Hang Seng, Nikkei and Kospi were rangebound in their respective early sessions.

In the previous session, the BSE gauge settled 68.81 points, or 0.17 per cent, higher at 39,908.06, while the Nifty climbed 30 points, or 0.25 per cent, to 11,946.75.

(With inputs from PTI)